What Does "SSSS" On Airline Boarding Pass Mean? Get Ready For A Search!

Secondary screening sh*t show

Given the procedure, I suppose that if you're about to get SSSS, you will not be issued an electronic boarding pass on your phone, and must have a paper BP? That will also lengthen the amount of time margin you have to be at the airport unfortunately.

Years ago, I had a ticket agent botch my itinerary during irregular ops. I complained, he was recalcitrant, and the conversation got heated. When he finally realized I was right, he gave me a corrected ticket minutes before the plane was to depart, and hand wrote SSSS on it. I missed my flight due to the secondary search.

I wrote United about the experience. They refunded me and told me they were retraining the agent. I’ve avoided United ever since.

That's been my experience. It gets interesting when you have multiple passengers on the same itinerary. Sometimes, P2 gets a digital boarding pass, but I'll have to check-in with an agent, get printed, do the extra search before boarding, etc. It's a pain.

That's near the top of things I dread the most when traveling. Every time I've gotten it, it sucks big time. They make you empty your carry ons. They go through every little item in your luggage. They are careless with my electronics like laptops. Sometimes they have taken items out of my luggage and dropped them to the floor. Worst experience was long ago when I once flew through Hobby in Houston. I got pulled out of the security line and got a body search and nearly missed my flight. I might have not minded it as much if it was hot looking female TSA agent, but no......got some guy instead. On the bright side, since that awful experience, I got a redress number and I haven't gotten the SSSS in years now.

Can you find out what the other abbreviations are and what they mean? That'd be most useful and interesting.

I've had this twice before on international flights. Each time, I had bought tickets at the last minute or only a few days prior. For me, it was a supplement scan of hand luggage for traces of drugs via a cotton swab and drug scanner.
The second time, I was afraid it would read positive for I was traveling with a gentleman who is on strong pain management drugs and possible cross contamination. If it was up to him, he'd carry them in one of those weekly pill organizer (Sunday thru Saturday). That's why I'm explicit with him to carry his RX in the original prescription bottles when we travel; we are too old to spend time in jail in a foreign country.

Just curious, why are you writing about this again? Or are you reposting an old post.

Flew one way Turkey to US once and had this for a month, was horrible. Apparently it's a thing

Had this on a last minute one-way booking MUC-MIA with LH in F - so I agree, these two factors surely make you suspicious 😀
The screening in Munich took 5 mins, the guys have been very friendly.

Most of the people I know who've received this designation have star wars names, and who had one way tickets traveling to USA.

My husband had this SSSS when we were going back from Amsterdam to Atlanta. Not a weird one way trip, and although we’d done it previously it was a year or two prior so nothing odd there. He has the exact same name as his father and it’s a relatively common name so we think his name triggered it. And I’ll add once leaving the Turks and Caicos Islands to head back to the US, he did not get SSSS but we were both taken in a back room, luggage hand searched, questioned separately etc etc, and finally released to get back into the hot, overcrowded “regular people” gate area.

I used to get this about every couple of months a few years ago. I had traveled from TPA to Havana, Moscow, Montreal and Tokyo within the space of 4 months. OOOPS ! I am sure that triggered it.
Since that year, nothing.

You missed the worst part - with the SSSS on your boarding pass you will be subjected to the same search at connecting airports as well. On a flight a couple of years ago, we flew from Laredo to Houston connecting to Istanbul. When my wife attempted to board the flight to Istanbul they realized she had not gone through TSA in Houston and forced her to go back to the screening area. She almost missed the flight. Those with tight connections are guaranteed to miss them with SSSS on their boarding pass. It stayed with her for a couple of years and then just dropped off.

I had it at Heathrow, flying to Miami. It was brilliant. We (I was flying with my family) got to go through the gate with all the Group 1 passengers. The check itself was just a bag search, id check, and a swab. Then we were released and were on the plane way ahead of the Group 7 people I should have been boarded with. I'm sure it's a bit different ex-US but in this case, 5 stars would SSSS again

I have had the “dreaded” SSSS several times. Never resulted in any extra security screening.

Ben, same as your's... probably odd international flights... I a[[lied for a redress and it stopped.

hahaha

Only the US has SSSS in place, no other country does this.

Once you visited a country that the US doesn't like, like Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and so on, then you'll no longer be eligible for any convenient way to cross the US border and you have to apply for a full B1/B2 visa and stand in line for hours with every other potentially dangerous person with just 8kg of hand luggage and a loving and caring family waiting back home. The bonus is that you will get a SSSS by default on every single flight to and from the USA. And the cherry on the cake? That will last for the rest of your life. It's one of the reasons why I'm no longer very interested in visiting that fascist shithole anymore.

We joke that SSSS stand for 'Super Secret Strip Seacrch'

Jar Jar Binks?

SSSS = Secondary Security Screening Selection

It often happens to me and my wife ever since we got married and changed our family name to combine our birth names into one name

so the name on the boarding pass slightly differs from the birth name on the passport even if this one also mentions our new full name

I had this flying SQ from Frankfurt to JFK 3 years ago. My ticket was not purchased last minute and I was flying in J. US citizen travelling on a USA passport who usually receives TSAPRE. I was annoyed. I see no point checking a US citizen who is already known to the TSA while not checking visitors.

When he was a child, my 8 year old started getting this. A SW ticket agent said there was someone on the No Fly list with the same name. Eventually someone must have removed him from the list because after a bunch of times in succession, it hasn’t happened in 20 years.

Anout 12 years ago I was flying from Italy to US with and overnight at LHR. When rechecking in early morning and going through security I got questioned by a British agent with a strong Indian accent about all details of my trip including name of the street where my hotel was in Padova - how would I know if I was taking taxies? She also asked me who was my Dean when I studied in College 20 years ago. I responded wiith someting like "Is this the best question you can come with?" After that I was always getting SSSS when traveling back to US from LHR. That was another reason to avoid travelening through that misearable airport...

“I won’t visit the ‘fascist shithole’ USA because they don’t want me to visit paragons of good governance such as Yemen”

Two SSSS happenings:

My teenage son received SSSS. He had no bags or items, not even a phone. TSA would not believe that he had no items. They had a conference of about a dozen smurfs to figure out how to proceed.

I have two passports. TSA "found" them in the SSSS search. I had time to kill, so when they asked why I had two passports I responded that I was pleading the fifth. They called the cops. About the fourth cop that arrived, finally stated that it wasn't a crime to have multiple passports.

Don't know that to be true. The only time I had SSSS on my boarding pass was on an ARN-FRA flight.

OMG Ben you bought back most painful disgraceful memories.
Going to the USA around 2003 and my name made me the easiest trap going to Utah on every occasion with a sick kid who wont stop screaming making a bigger scene than the SSSS screening and seaching and tapping every part of me. When I complaint I was told by the sleeping American travelers that it is better be safe, this are only procedors. At times I wished that earth open and suck me in in embarrasments.